The Responsibility To Protect (“R2P”) in International Law: Protection of Human Rights or Destruction of State Sovereignty ?

Abstract

The last decade has been characterized by a fervent debate over the role of the United Nations when it comes to dealing with and responding to large scale human rights violations. The recurrent legal, political and philosophical discussions pertaining to the inherent tension between state sovereignty and intervention have yielded inconclusive results. Against this background, the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ has emerged as a relatively new principle that aims at the protection of the world’s most vulnerable populations from abominable international crimes, namely, genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The central idea underlying the concept of R2P is primarily twofold: one, that sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their own citizens from avoidable catastrophes and two, when they are unable or unwilling to do so, this responsibility falls upon the shoulders of the international community. The primary objection raised by international law scholars regarding the practical implementation of R2P has been with respect to its incongruity with the concept of state sovereignty. In this Article, the author contends that by providing a legal and ethical basis for humanitarian intervention, the R2P, rather than conflicting with, complements the principle of state sovereignty where a state fails to live up to its responsibility. The author focuses on fortifying this stance by arguing in favour of the employment of an extensive approach, as opposed to a restrictive approach in the interpretation of the customary prohibition on the use of force and seeks to establish that such interpretation serves to sever the Gordian knot of tension between intervention and sovereignty.